Nicholas Winton was a young stockbroker in London. The year was 1939. Hitler’s armies were ravaging Czechoslovakia, tearing families apart. Parents were marched to concentration camps, and the children were abandoned.

Winton got wind of their plight and resolved to help them. He used his vacation to travel to Prague where he met parents who were willing to give their children over to his care. Over the next five months, Winton took five trips, transporting 669 children to safety.

After the war, Winton didn’t tell anyone what he had done, not even his wife. But in 1988 she discovered an old scrapbook in the attic, which told the whole story, listing every name.

She got Winton to tell her the story, and then Mrs. Winton went to work. Unknown to her husband, she contacted the rescued children, now in their 70s and 80s. And on a fall morning of 2009, she gave her husband the biggest surprise any 100-year-old man has received since the days of Sarah and Abraham.

The 22 survivors showed up at his house to say “Thank you.” And they presented him with cards from their 7,000 descendants.

The Bible is right when it says, “It is good to give thanks” (Psalm 92:1).